Jason Wilson Explores the New World of Cider in The Cider Revival

Aug. thirty, 2019

As I write this, I am drinking a cider fabricated past a cult producer in New York'due south Catskills region called Aaron Burr Cidery, named later the treasonous vice president who (as you lot may accept heard) shot and killed Alexander Hamilton in a duel. This item bottling is labeled Bounding main Apples, and the apples used to make this cider were manus-foraged from wild, uncultivated trees along the shoreline of remote Island au Haut off the coast of Maine by the cider makers, Andy Brennan and Polly Giragosian. The copse grow so close to the sea that a low-cal film of salt forms on the apples' skins equally they ripen. This bottling was made from fruit harvested during the autumns of 2022 and 2016, and then when I'k drinking it, the cider has a few years of historic period. It's funky, elemental, mineral, briny. The ripe, earthy apple tree aromas advise a gnarled skin, simply at that place are even more than far-flung notes that gustatory modality closer to old amontillado sherry. Aaron Burr Cidery made only 21 cases of this cider, and information technology is difficult to find. I've seen it retail at just under $thirty for a 500-milliliter canteen, which is smaller than a standard wine canteen. I've seen it on a drinks menu at a fancy restaurant in Manhattan for more $50.

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Suffice to say Aaron Burr Cidery's Ocean Apples is about as far from that one, alone mass-market cider your local craft beer bar probably keeps on tap. If y'all're like a lot of people, you drank that one cider once, and constitute it sugary, cloying, one-note, and something to avoid. Y'all may have never drank cider again. This is sad, considering that'due south like drinking a glass of Yellow Tail or a inexpensive boxed wine or maybe even a Bartles & Jaymes wine cooler, and and so deciding that all wine—white or crimson, sparkling or rosé, Former World or New Globe, thousand cru or gluggable—sucks.

If you're like a lot of people, you drank that one cider once, and plant it sugary, cloying, one-note, and something to avoid. You lot may have never drank cider once more. This is sad, because that'southward similar drinking a glass of Yellow Tail or a cheap boxed wine or maybe even a Bartles & Jaymes wine cooler, and and so deciding that all vino sucks.

These days, in my vino fridge, I have dozens of excellent ciders. They crowd out much of the infinite that, until recently, was reserved for my favorite wines. I have bubbly ciders and nevertheless ciders, tannic ciders and acidic ciders, bone-dry out ciders and off-dry ciders, ciders made of American heirloom apples, English bittersharp and bloodshot apples, Spanish apples, French apples, and wild crab apples. Most of these ciders come in 750-milliliter bottles, the standard-sized bottle for vino. Some are made in the same traditional method every bit Champagne. Others use apples that are macerated with their skins before pressing to achieve an effect like to red vino. At that place are bottlings made from a single apple multifariousness, such as 100 percent Northern Spy or Kingston Black or Geneva Tremlett, labeled merely like pinot noir or chardonnay or cabernet sauvignon. I even take single-orchard and single-tree bottlings.

Most of the ciders are blends of colorfully named apple tree varieties: Newtown Pippin, Roxbury Russet, Dark-brown Snout, Golden Russet, Harry Masters Bailiwick of jersey, Ashmead's Kernel, Esopus Spitzenburg, Ellis Biting, Bulmers Norman, Wickson Crab, Zabergau Reinette—only to proper name but a few of the hundreds of unfamiliar apples with which one can make cider. Beyond those hundreds are thousands more unnamed varieties growing wild throughout North America, to be discovered past foragers similar those at Aaron Burr Cidery. In that location are most 1,400 known wine grapes in the globe— a fraction of the vii,500 apple varieties known to be cultivated. In the US alone there are more than two,500 identified apple tree varieties in existence. There have been more than 16,000 varieties cultivated at one time or another in Due north America, though nigh of them are now extinct.

All of this may come equally a surprise to drinkers who have only experienced cider through the prism of craft beer, consuming it from that i, sad, lone tap handle at the bar. But you don't "brew" cider. Cider is essentially apple wine, fabricated with fruit grown in an orchard in the same way vino comes from grapes grown in a vineyard. And like wine, cider tin can only be fabricated in one case a year, after the autumn harvest. Cider makers even utilize a version of the truism (or well-worn cliche) that winemakers always echo: Cider making begins in the orchard. This wine-similar arroyo to cider has recently taken concord so fully that what evolved was a new species of drinks person termed a pommelier, an expert on cider, akin to the sommelier.

Now, if the idea of a pommelier strikes you as utterly absurd, I do not arraign you lot. I once shared your opinion. But a couple of years agone, the idea of a pommelier existed in the same mental space where I filed other sommelier-wannabes. In my listen, pommelier ranked somewhere below the beer sommelier (or "Cicerone"), the bourbon sommelier (or "Steward"), or possibly even the cigar sommelier (or "Master Tobacconist"). Certainly, the pommelier was less ridiculous than the water sommelier, the olive oil sommelier, the tea sommelier, and the mustard sommelier—all of which have also emerged over the by several years. But only slightly.

It'due south not that I didn't enjoy cider. I secretly loved the expert stuff, particularly the complex, dry kind. My skepticism came from my piece of work, covering the earth of alcoholic beverages. Cider, within this arena, has always been viewed as a second-class tipple. I've written columns on cocktails, spirits, wine, and beer for newspapers and magazines for more than a decade, and but on a few rare occasions had I been permitted past an editor to slip a skillful discussion about cider into the mix. I was always trying to advocate for the ciders that I loved, from northern Spain or Normandy or a fine New England producer such as New Hampshire'south Farnum Loma. But something was ever getting lost in the translation. One of my columns suggested cider as an alternative to wine at Thanksgiving. I still stand solidly past that advice, though I'chiliad pretty sure most readers had not sipped "cider" with their turkey since moving on from the sweet sparkling Martinelli's juice they drank at the kiddie table. For some other, even less successful commodity, I pitched cider every bit a summertime, lite culling to those awful Skinny Margaritas everyone was drinking in the late aughts. You become the picture: Cider ever had to be positioned as an alternative to everything else.

Throughout my career, I've turned people on to all way of obscure and off-the-browbeaten-path drinks—from bitter amaro to strange liqueurs to weird wines fabricated from grapes they tin can't pronounce from regions they couldn't find on a map. Simply cider always seemed a span too far, a place many simply would not follow. In my personal life, I could feel friends and family wince or glance at one another skeptically, bracing themselves, whenever I opened a cider for them.

Dear reader, what I'm trying to say is this: I am now on my way to becoming a Certified Pommelier. God assistance me. This is my story.

The problem was that nigh people thought of cider as something that existed in a drinks netherworld, that strange sphere where "malternatives" or "alcopops" similar Zima, Mike's Hard Lemonade, Twisted Tea, 4 Loko, and Smirnoff Water ice lurked, a bad crowd upward to no proficient. Cider was something consumed by your gluten-free ex-girlfriend, or that weird ponytailed dude who even so played Magic: The Gathering, or possibly out of a jug past some woodsman in Vermont wearing a flannel shirt and a long beard. In fact, it was during my college days in Vermont when I first started seeing so-chosen "hard" ciders like Woodchuck and Cider Jack pop up side by side to the IPAs, hefeweizens, and oatmeal stouts.

The biggest effect for cider may be that, for many people, I often notwithstanding have to clarify that I'k talking about "hard cider" to distinguish information technology from the apple tree juice you buy in plastic containers at the farmers market place or sugary Mott's or the sparkling Martinelli's of childhood. Instead, that stuff should be called "soft cider" to differentiate, because the non-alcoholic stuff you drank every bit a kid is the fake thing. I really hate when people call cider "hard cider." Later on all, there is no "hard wine." Wine is to grape juice what cider is to apple juice. Cider is cider—for hundreds of years it'due south been an alcoholic beverage made from apples and other fruit.

Yes, yous'll quickly find that I have strong feelings on cider. That's because somewhere along the journeying of my life, I stopped hiding my beloved of this beverage. A few years ago, all logic exist damned, I dove headfirst into the earth of cider. Perhaps the bar is low, but at this betoken I take become—dare I say it—a cider expert. No, probably "good" is too k. I don't make cider, and I do not abound apples. No, instead, let'south say that I take become a knowledgeable aficionado, an educator, and mayhap even a critic. I even passed an test given past the United States Association of Cider Makers, which bestowed upon me the title of Certified Cider Professional. Beloved reader, what I'm trying to say is this: I am now on my way to becoming a Certified Pommelier. God help me. This is my story.

The first pommelier I ever met was Dan Pucci, a short guy with dark curly hair and beard who is soft-spoken and ordinarily dressed in a typical white-guy button-down shirt with sleeves rolled up. This unassuming nature, however, hides a radical fanaticism. Once you become Pucci talking about cider, his bluish eyes abound intense and his oral fissure tin barely continue upwards with the thoughts and ideas spilling out. Pucci becomes a cider evangelist speaking in tongues.

"Cider's issues moving forward are all nearly expectations and norms," he'd say, as he poured a unmarried-varietal cider from Herefordshire, England, with a pungent whiff of the cow pasture, or a Basque cider vaguely redolent of balsamic vinegar and berries, or a fleshy, concentrated, tannic cider called Lost Orchard, made from rare and "feral" apples gathered in Sonoma County past Tilted Shed. "Cider is in a dynamic place right now. People are discovering and rediscovering things. But cider'south big challenge moving forward is all about identity. For example, we're not sure if we want to be like beer or wine. We're still figuring shit out in the cider community."

I met Pucci when he worked every bit cider manager of a bar on the Lower East Side of Manhattan chosen Wassail. Sometimes, I find it hard to believe that Wassail existed at all. It'southward as if the place were conjured from some cider's geek's imagination: an all-cider bar with a vegetarian menu on Orchard Street that took its name from a medieval English Christmastime drinking ritual meant to wake upwardly the apple trees, scare away evil spirits, and ensure adjacent year's bountiful harvest. At Wassail, you would eat dishes made with foraged mushrooms, organic squash, and pickled root vegetables, and concoctions similar a salad of cucumber and melon, with macadamia nuts and sorrel leaves, dressed in borage seed oil. Generally importantly, Pucci had curated a list of more than 100 ciders, from all over the world: Normandy and Brittany in France, Asturias in northern Spain, Somerset in the UK, apflewein from Federal republic of germany, and elsewhere. More than 20 of them were poured by the drinking glass, and some bottles at the higher end topped $60.

The crowd of drinkers in Wassail was unique. The obvious difference was that it seemed more gender-neutral than other geeky spots for beer or whiskey or mixology. I met people that drank cider considering they couldn't drink beer due to a gluten allergy. Some were natural wine lovers who found some of the like, funky attributes in cider. Others told me they'd started drinking cider because they'd traveled or studied abroad in France or Spain. And others but seemed weird and ultra-retro, like at any moment they might literally stand up upwards and start wassailing. "People who come hither don't have preconceived notions about apples or cider. They're open up to whatever," said Pucci. "With wine, people come to the bar and say, 'I don't like chardonnay.' No one comes in hither and says, 'I don't like Northern Spy or Kingston Black.'"

When the place opened in 2015, critics didn't seem to know what to make of it. "Hanging out at Wassail is similar going to a planet populated by nitrogen-based life-forms; everything is at once recognizable and thoroughly different," wrote dining critic Pete Wells, in his review for the New York Times. "The proper response," wrote Eater critic Robert Sietsema, "is bewilderment." But even in their bewilderment, they generally gave the place favorable reviews.

Finally, it seemed, cider was having its stylish turn in the vivid popular-cultural lights. "Difficult cider is having its craft beer moment," declared Bon Appétit in its January 2022 issue. Sales of regional and local craft cider were upwardly 30 percent in 2017, following a 40 percent spring in 2016. The growth was palpable. In 2011 there were 187 registered cideries in the nation. By 2018, there were 820. In 2011, a little less than 5 million people identified themselves as "regular cider drinkers." Just iv years afterward, in 2015, more than xviii million people identified themselves as such. Cider would become a billion-dollar business organization in 2017. "In that location's no reason apples shouldn't earn the same respect as grapes," said the drinks site Dial in 2016, upon declaring, "Cider is undeniably having a moment in America."

The contemporary rediscovery of artisan cider, and the apples to brand information technology, was a sincere effort to glean the cognition of an earlier, pre-Prohibition era. It also felt like a take chances to revisit a version of rural America that wasn't some dubious, pernicious myth put along by a cherry-hatted, orange-faced liar and meant to divide the country.

While the ciders at Wassail from around the earth were wonderful and fascinating, the largest office of the list was given over to American ciders. And while there were a few smashing ciders from the Pacific Northwest, such equally Art + Science in Oregon or Snowdrift in Washington, the about essential role of the carte was for ciders from New England and the rest of the northeastern United States. Invariably, my favorite ciders that Pucci poured were from New York or Vermont or New Hampshire, fabricated with rediscovered, historic cider-apple varieties. As someone who's lived my entire life in the Northeast, including formative years in New England, I felt a deep connection to these beverages. That, to me, felt like the most eye-opening thing about cider. This was more than a "moment" or a passing fad. This was a revival of something that had once been the well-nigh important beverage in America.

Like me, Pucci had spent many years deep in the wine chimera. He'd trained as a sommelier and sold Italian wine at Eataly and Otto, Mario Batali's casual enoteca. Like me, he was fluent in obscure grape varieties and little-known regions. Merely he'd grown disenchanted with Italian wine. He grew sick of what he chosen "fetishizing far-off places" and the "mythology of wine." And then he left wine behind, threw himself into cider, and became a pommelier. One thing that drew Pucci to cider, and keeps him going, is the idea that American cider hails from less exotic origins, places like the Catskills or the Green Mountains, or the Berkshires. As the wine critic Jon Bonné wrote in his own profile on Pucci (which also appear "cider's moment"): "You lot beverage wine from Gigondas or Santorini and you're supposedly transported—while cider exudes a sort of comfort in its well-nigh-ness."

Cider comes from places where your relatives possibly live or might be the hometown of a friend or where y'all one time went to summertime camp or drove through on a family car trip. Or at least you've maybe picked fruit at a U-Pick orchard, or bobbed for apples at Halloween, or eaten a candied ane on a stick. "I think people, at least here, understand apples in a mode that nosotros don't understand grapes," Pucci said.

That idea was powerful to me. I'd spent the past iii years consumed by writing a volume well-nigh obscure wines, advocating for little-known and misunderstood grapes similar fer servadou, traminer, chasselas, and zierfandler. This took me far away from abode, wandering around the odd corners of Europe for lengthy periods of time. Back dwelling, I found information technology hard to connect with friends and family about my experiences. I'd been away in Europe and then much that I also began to feel I was non sufficiently engaged with American topics in a way that seemed critical, especially given the political situation. Later I finished writing that vino book, I wanted to reconnect with my own country. In cider'south revival, I saw similarities to the cocktail renaissance I'd covered a decade earlier. The gimmicky rediscovery of artisan cider, and the apples to brand it, was a sincere attempt to glean the knowledge of an earlier, pre-Prohibition era. Information technology likewise felt like a chance to revisit a version of rural America that wasn't some dubious, pernicious myth put forth by a ruddy-hatted, orangish-faced liar and meant to carve up the country.

Then, merely equally I was about to publish my first commodity on the American cider revival, suddenly and without warning, at the summit of what was supposed to exist cider's moment—I learned that Wassail might be endmost its doors on Orchard Street. At first, at that place were rumors and speculation. Then, Pucci left to start a restaurant consultancy and begin work on an encyclopedic tome about cider. Finally, a few months later on, Wassail was shuttered. No reason was given. It's as if the place just disappeared back into whatever other dimension, whatever culling reality, it had come up from.

But by that point, I was in as well deep. I felt like someone had to keep talking about the cider revival, and I figured information technology would be me.

Jason Wilson is The Citizen's 2022 Jeremy Nowak Swain, funded by Spring Point Partners, in laurels of our late chairman Jeremy Nowak. He is the author of iii books, includingGodforsaken Grapes, series editor of The Best American Travel Writing, and writes for the Washington Mail service, New York Times, New Yorker and many other publications. The Cider Revival will exist published on September three. Order it hither.

Photo courtesy Jason Wilson

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Source: https://thephiladelphiacitizen.org/cider-revival-book-jason-wilson/

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